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In November 2007, Trevor Graham, 26, was fatally shot by a Waterloo Regional Police Service officer after disobeying orders to drop a knife in a botched drugstore robbery. Graham had been battling an addiction to painkillers and had serious mental health problems that landed him in the criminal justice system.

After politely holding up the store for painkillers, he moved toward two police officers, the drugs in one hand, a knife in the other. One officer fired a single shot that pierced Graham’s heart — and created two painful and everlasting ripples. We spoke to Graham’s mother, Karyn Greenwood-Graham.

There are two ripples that go out. One of them is in the community with the family, the other one is in the policing community. And I think the policing community themselves need to really think about the multicultural diversity within the force. It’s not the same as it was 10 or 20 years ago.

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I think what we really need to do is start looking at having it mandatory for police to undergo some psychological counselling of some sort to help them through the process when they’ve actually shot someone. I know it damages us. I know it has damaged us for life.

And I know, having talked to other police officers, that it does stay with them forever. One retired officer that I spoke to, before police changed the way they called off their police chases, feels he was instrumental in the death of a kid — he called him a child — on a motorcycle, who went off the road and into a tree. Yes, and it stayed with him.

One thing that has to happen is that the police have to start keeping care of their own and making help mandatory, and not expecting an officer to come forward and say, “Hey, I need help.”

The ripple on the other side is us, the affected families. We don’t get that trauma support. As a result, I haven’t been able to work for a lot of years. I’m on social assistance now. I’ve lost a lot of possessions. I don’t really care about the possessions to be quite honest.

Greenwood-Graham, through a group called Grief2Action, offers counselling to the families of those killed in police shootings.

I care about my (other) son and others, and what this process has done to me and all the affected families. I think it’s important that we have supports and I don’t know where that’s going to come from. I’ve been offering support as a peer, to reach out to families to try and ensure that they have somebody there that they call at 2 o’clock in the morning.

I gave my number to Mrs. Yatim at the visitation at the funeral home and said, “If you need to talk, if you want advice, if you want a shoulder, call me.”

We don’t get the support, and it’s damaging.

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Greenwood-Graham also spoke of the importance of sharing evidence, including any video, with families sooner. In her son’s case, store video of the shooting was first shown to her on the eve of a coroner’s inquest.

I didn’t have access to anything surrounding the shooting, except what was on TV news reports, which was video without my son in it. I found out through the Special Investigations Unit that there was a film from the store, and the first time I saw that was at the pre-coroner’s-inquest meeting — sixteen months after the shooting.

Oh my god, how emotional is that? I was numb. They called in victims’ services for me because I was so distraught, and where was victims’ services when the shooting happened? It’s something the Waterloo police has since looked into with the SIU, actually.

But I wish I’d been able to see that video when I had the SIU report, way back a year before that, because it would have answered a lot of questions that were ruminating in my mind. I was just so angry, and it would have really helped to have seen that then.

Greenwood-Graham has since sought to get a copy of the store video, which was played in open coroner’s court, but for reasons unknown to her, that request was denied.

All of the sudden, they said we can’t help you anymore. The police didn’t want to release it. I think they thought I’d put it on YouTube. I still haven’t gotten it.

I think it’s going to be important moving forward, that people affected by police shootings across Ontario, do it in numbers, and form a group. I called it Grief2Action, I don’t care what we call it. But I think we need to have a stronger voice.

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